‘Breath of the Wild’ CEMU 1.7.5 Update

It has been about two months since we last checked in with how The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was running on CEMU so we’re going to check back with it today.

Last time we checked, the game was pretty much unplayable and ran in the single digits in terms of frames per second. A quick look on YouTube for videos of Breath of the Wild with the latest CEMU 1.7.5 update shows the game is in a much more playable state but there is still work to be done.

The CEMU subreddit is a great source for information regarding the game and here is what they had to say about the game with its latest update.

Noticeable Fixes:

• Changelog – an interesting note: “Modifying the ‘accurateShaderMul’ game profile option now invalidates precompiled shaders” This is in the .ini file. Check out the changelog for more deatils. According to people on discord: “accurateShaderMul = min” can help with RAM usage and improve performance, BUT at the expense of graphics glitches” thanks /u/ralstig.
• FPS is generally better.
• Fewer softlocks and crashes
• Camera bugs should be fixed
• Ai should be fixed (Horses jumping at the right time, animals acting normal, etc…)
• Textures should be better on Nvidia cards
• Shrines and Eventide Island shouldn’t softlock

A look at the video above shows the frames per second are much better and are mostly stable at 30. Granted, this was recorded on a heavily overclocked i7-7700k paired with a GTX 1070 and many people do not have that type of CPU or GPU but it’s still good to see such an increase in performance. We’ve come a long way since we last looked.

Here’s another video showing the game running on a much more modest rig (i5-7600k and GTX 970) and it is still showing a much improved performance. We do see the performance isn’t perfect but it is definitely playable.

There are still bugs that haven’t yet been ironed out from the previous version and here is a list of those.

• Cutscenes technically don’t work yet without the cemuhook
• Amiibo don’t fully function, check this list out you can also add them using this save game editor. The editor is a little glitchy, so back up your save folder somewhere else. You might need to replace all of the game_sav files in each of the folders.
• Monsters render weird when at a distance
• Enemies sometimes freeze
• Some people still having the same bugs from 1.7.3d ( sinking into the ground, no grass, runes not working, etc…). It is caused by using version 1.1.1+ of BOTW. This can be fixed by correctly using DLC. It needs to go inside of the cemu folder, not replace existing files.
• Game Crashes often – try this fix
• Crashing when going to shrines
• Motion Controls can be used by right clicking on the game.
• You can take pictures (Camera Rune) but they all show up black. Same with Compendium. It still technically works though.
• Memories don’t work for some people, they might work for you!
• Many people are locked at 20fps outside of shrines. No real fix yet except maybe using cheatengine or rivatuner :)
• Heat texture in the desert and other places shows up weird – Caused by graphics pack, update your graphics pack.
• Rocks and textures sometimes show up multi-colored (rainbow). This is (likely) caused by cemuhook. Try pulling up the map. If that doesn’t work try saving and then loading that save. If that doesn’t work then good luck. You’ll probably have to restart cemu
• To register horse press “+” or “a” (maybe both) before pressing enter on your keyboard. Also try changing your controller type.
• Shadowy Grass – fix
• AMD Radeon HD Series graphics cards render strange shaders. The game is unplayable on those graphics cards
• Lava textures show up weird and blocky
• Zora divine beast Vah Ruta has flickering inside. No fix yet.
• Crashing may cause saves to disappear :(
• Water in Gerudo Fortress is glitchy as well.
• Sometimes sounds will play that shouldn’t (i.e. water in lava areas, other random sounds when attacking). No fix for this.

They do mention your game has a chance of crashing when entering a shrine and the best fix is to keep trying as of right now.

CEMU is an emulator that will allow you to play Wii U games on your PC. The appeal is allowing you to play your favorite Wii U titles in 4K resolution along with boosting the frame rate. The Wii U only supports up to 1080p natively so you’ll be seeing a big spike in visual fidelity. You can download it right here.